Drought: Part 2. Solutions and opportunities for small and medium scale: redux

Continuing with our deep dive into drought, my good friend Nick Steiner and I are going to move now from defining drought and the its myriad of causes and factors that make it worse, to a wide range of solutions and opportunities available to people who are living in different environments and with different access to land and space. 

You may not be surprised to hear that we ended up running long and so I split the episode into two parts. In this session we cover mostly the order of consideration for a retrofit of a home or even a landscape design geared towards water harvesting and rehydration. Then we look at the options available to people in small living spaces like apartments and condos in urban or peri urban areas. We also start to explore the next size up which would be small to medium sized homes with access to anything from a small garden to a couple acres of land. 

The great thing about looking at things in this order is that pretty much all the options available to small scale living or land access are also available as you size up. I also think it’s important to explain that there’s no reason you need to own or have access to large amounts of land in order to have a meaningful effect and influence on the water catchment in your local area, or often even more importantly, assist in shifting the culture of water use and abuse that is baked in to many of our modern societies to one of reverence and respect for water and the life it enables. 

Now, it’s impossible that Nick and I mention and explore all of the options at the various scales of living that we cover in these next two episodes, so please reach out to us if you think there are other possibilities we should be aware of or mention in future talks. We’re always excited to expand our own understanding and have a better grasp of the new and emerging knowledge for working with water.